Monday, December 5, 2011

Don't call them Fairy Penguins!

‘The
penguins are called ‘little penguins’. They don’t like to be called Fairy
Penguins. If you call them Fairy penguins, they won’t talk to you.’ The nasally
accent of our intrepid bus driver’s incessant chatter was interspersed with
grinding of gears as we pulled away from the college and snaked through the
streets of Carnegie up onto Dandenong Road and finally the freeway in the
general direction of Phillip Island.

‘Seat
belts. Seat belts, put ya seat belts on.’ He had said accompanied by the first
grinding of the gears. Then there were more jokes that went over the heads of
the students from the Language Centre sitting dutifully in their seats with
much less noise than most school classes would have and obviously they did not
understand the bad jokes because there were no catcalls or jeers. Instead of
laughing at his own jokes, the driver just punished the gearbox of the bus a
few more times with a vigor that was matched by his strident babble about
nothing really of consequence. He told
us the bit about the fairy penguins three more times before he realized that
perhaps they did not understand or maybe it was not so funny after all.

Watching the back of his balding grey
flecked scraggly mane as he bent over the wheel, I wondered how long he had
been driving buses or whether his ineptitude in driving this morning was just a
result of having a rough weekend on the juice bottle. I restrained myself from
offering to swap places with him; I would drive the bus and he could relax in
the seat behind. The only thing stopping me from offering was the lack of an
articulated license. Having driven an International truck and an old World War
II truck as a kid, I figured a bus could not be that difficult but the lack of
appropriate legal qualifications and certificates could be a problem.

Down at San Remo, he did redeem himself by
showing us where the Mantra rays were swimming around in the shallows near the
pier. Great big black shadows just under the water swishing around in silent
graceful arcs, their barbed tails swayed behind them. Phillip Island is surprisingly cold for early
December. According to one of the camp staff at the camp site where we are
staying, it is around two or three degrees cooler than Melbourne always and
that is due to the winds coming off the Antarctica which is a few thousand kilometers to the south of here. The seas are decidedly chilly.

The penguins fluttering up the wet sand at dusk are a delight to behold. Walking up to the viewing station we were able to see a little penguin chick peeping out of his burrow. He or she was probably wondering about the craziness of herds of humans walking down to the sea chattering aimlessly, rugged up against the bitterly cold winds that tugged and pushed at jackets and parkas. Above the seated watchers on the cement benches at the beach, seagulls rose and fell - bits of confetti thrown in celebratory glee - they hovered just out of reach. Wings angled just so, they rode the drafts, soaring then swooping down to land on the sand and harass the penguins who they wanted to intimidate into regurgitating their fish so they could feed rather than the penguin chicks.

Welcome to an eclatic blog of opinion, poems, short stories and waffles

I will post at will anything from my opinion on current affairs, my daily boring life, my meditations, my philosophizing on the meaning of living and G-d and the purpose of it all.You are welcome to join the ongoing debate and contribute criticisms, compliments or your own wafflings so long as they are not crude and vulgar; so long as you can express yourself in English. I welcome your input.